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Jason Zanon, founder of the quirky biographical website Executed Today (in the Find A Death model), discusses the facts behind Antiwar.com columnist Jon Basil Utley‘s father’s execution by firing squad in a Soviet gulag, the top 10 executions of the 2000′s, Thomas Edison’s pioneering of the electric chair during his PR campaign against Tesla’s alternating current, Cameron Willingham‘s execution in a Texas prison for the questionable arson murders of his three children and how groups of regular people turn into lynch mobs at the drop of a hat.

The US has a higher rate of incarceration, both per capita and absolutely, than either the Russian Federation or Communist China.

Angela Davis characterizes the situation as the "prison industrial complex", a system in which prisons are contracted out to private contractors and prisoners used in effect as slave labor for private profit.

Conservatives, it seems, have a bottomless interest in the wartime Soviet gulags but none at all in the US Capitalist ones, which are right under their nose.

Note also–the US has one lawyer to about 300 people–also the highest in the world. No coincidence.

I only wish that in an antiwar vein, I had squeezed in the St. Patrick's Battalion. They decided they were fighting for the bad guys during the Mexican-American War and went over to the Mexicans:http://www.executedtoday.com/2009/09/13/1847-san-…

Also of interest: the bad situation of Quakers who tried to stay neutral and pacifist during the American Revolution, which connects to the recent "other Scott Horton" interview about why the Constitution restricted the definition of treason:http://www.executedtoday.com/2008/11/25/1780-davi…

Tangentially related, Hassan Narallah claims, as of today, to have video footage of Israel's following Hariri before he was blown up. I've always thought Israel was behind that assassination as it would be the only entity that would benefit, by being able to blame its enemies for such a 'horrific' event. We shall see./

Ah yes! Those Irish had the right idea just not enough firepower. How is it that they could so easily serve both the British and American military knowing what they'd already been through? I suppose starving can do that to a man. And those "quirky" Quakers! Ole Smedley didn't let that stop him even though once out of costume he did pen a worthwhile missive. I would rather he'd instead have led a peaceful life even if it meant never having known him.

"Topsy (born circa 1875, died January 4, 1903), was a domesticated elephant with the Forepaugh Circus at Coney Island's Luna Park. Because she had killed three men in as many years (including a severely abusive trainer who attempted to feed her a lit cigarette),[1] Topsy was deemed a threat to people by her owners and killed by electrocution on January 4, 1903, at the age of 28.[2] Inventor Thomas Edison captured the event on film. He would release it later that year under the title Electrocuting an Elephant.

A means of execution initially discussed was hanging. However, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals protested and other ways were considered. Edison then suggested electrocution with alternating current, which had been used for the execution of humans since 1890."

wiki

What Wiki doesn't mention is that this was a marketing strategy in Edison's war with Westinghouse–another robber-electrician at least as bad as Edison.